School transfer and the diffraction of learning trajectories

Abstract

School transfer acts like a prism, diffracting children’s social and learning trajectories. In this paper I explore this sociological effect through two case studies of children moving from the primary to the secondary school. The impacts of the school, peer and family fields are explored using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and shifts in the relative power of these fields are traced across the primary–secondary interface. My analysis explains why, decades after Nisbet and Entwistle first linked poor school transition with social class, it is still the case that the economically and culturally more well‐endowed make the most of moving school. So it is that through processes of harmonization and dissonance, of compliance and resistance, children navigate, and are steered, from their embodied social and education pasts towards future constrained possibilities. These processes are partially contextualized in the learning of school mathematics.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• Case study
• Cultural capital
• Mathematics
• School transfer